Commercial passenger aircraft conventionally include 115V AC, 400 Hz electrical systems to supply power for the operation of on-board electrical loads. The AC power source for aircraft is typically one or more engine-driven generators with a fixed power capacity. In such fixed power supply environment, additional ancillary electrical loads in the aircraft could result in an over-demand condition on the electrical system, i.e., the fixed capacity generators.
With that being said, there is an ever-increasing demand from passengers on commercial passenger aircrafts to power their portable personal electronic devices (“PEDs”), such as, for example, smart phones, tablets, laptops, etc. In addition, many commercial passenger aircrafts provide for wireless Internet connection to such PEDs, which even more so increases the consumer demand to use PEDs on a flight to access the Internet for personal, as well as, work purposes. However, the problem remains that aircrafts have a limited power supply. This increased demand for power supply to a multitude of passenger PEDs was not considered a part of the original aircraft design. Therefore, there is a need in the art for a power management system that prevents an over-demand condition on an aircraft's electrical system, while also being able to supply power to a variable number and type of passenger PEDs that may connect to the system during a flight.
Existing systems in the industry that manage the power available to passenger PEDs deny power to the passenger in some manner, such as, for example, disabling the power supply to passenger PEDs at a certain threshold. The primary reason why existing systems deny power to some or all passenger PEDs is that such loads on the aircraft's electrical system by, in some cases, a fairly large number of passengers (e.g., the typical Boeing 747-400 aircraft can transport up to 492 passengers) simultaneously demanding power for their PEDs could overwhelm the aircraft's electrical system, resulting in an unsafe condition. For example, modern PEDs, including laptops, smart devices, and tablets, can draw anywhere from 2.5 W to 100 W. Such power consumption multiplied by hundreds of passengers could overwhelm the aircraft's electrical system in an unsafe manner. At the same time, denial of power to passenger PEDs, while not necessarily unsafe, is still an undesirable outcome and will likely reduce passenger satisfaction.
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an increasingly pervasive industry standard that defines cables, connectors, and communication protocols used in a bus for connection, data communications, and power supply between computers and electrical devices, such as portable personal electronic devices. USB has become rather commonplace on laptops, smart phones, and tablets.
A fairly recent USB connector, the USB Type C connector, has been released that is smaller than previous USB connectors, such as the Type A connector. The USB Type C connector also enables a connection with a USB receptacle with flipping enabled. The USB Type C connector builds on the most recent USB 3.1 protocol published by the USB Implementers Forum (http://www.usb.org/home). The USB Type C connector is also backwards compatible with older USB protocols.
Furthermore, a new USB Power Delivery (USB-PD) specification was recently developed to enable the delivery of higher power levels through the new USB cables and connectors. The specifications for this technology can be found at http://www.usb.org/developers/powerdelivery/. This technology was developed to create a universal power plug for laptops, tablets, smart phones, etc. that may require more than 5 volts (V) using cables and plugs compatible with existing USB solutions. The USB-PD specification defines a communication link between USB ports connected via a cable supporting USB-PD and connectors supporting USB-PD. The most recent USB-PD specification permits power consumption of up to 100 W to support high power consuming portable devices, such as laptops. Unfortunately, existing power management systems for commercial passenger aircrafts have not been designed to support such high power consuming devices within their fixed power supply environment.
Therefore, a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above.